16. Otherwise when you are praising God in the Spirit, how can someone else, who is now put in the position of an inquirer, say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since they do not know what you are saying?
17. You are giving thanks well enough, but no one else is edified.
18. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.
19. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.
20. Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.
21. In the Law it is written: “With other tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.”
22. Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers.
23. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
24. But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all,
25. as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”
26. What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.
27. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret.
28. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.